Colours of autumn in Sweden.
Photo © J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2010
In a highly automated and globalized world where standards of living seem to be continuously improving, where ‘organic’, ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘sustainable’ are key words in today’s food industry, it’s surprising how far we’ve come from the basics of growing and cooking the food that we consume.
It’s much easier for example to head off to the grocery store and from there, choose from an array of produce to buy and bring home, than to harvest the very same produce from the garden or soil – lack of space, lack of time, too much city life, too many working hours etc. – there are countless valid reasons for our choices and why it is so difficult to have our food straight from the garden, sans chemical pesticides, sans chemical food preserving processes and packaging.
The Picking
But with not so much the concept of sustainability in mind, rather as time spent on something I enjoy doing in my spare time come autumn, and what makes the little happy moments in life, I went apple picking today in a charming and rustic Swedish garden with the aim of making some homemade apple sauce!
Swedish rustic charm.
This garden comes as part of an old house built during the 1800s along the Swedish west coast. Tucked away in a little niche corner of a narrow, winding road, it was almost surreal, driving up the path, under apple boughs to reach the center of the garden that was washed golden with low rays of the morning Nordic sun in autumn.
Red Ingrid Marie Swedish apples.
The garden had basically two varieties of Swedish apples, the small red and attractive Ingrid Marie and the green golden Signe Tillisch. These varieties are in contrast to a previous autumn picking of Gravensteins.
The Ingrid Marie is named after the daughter of the teacher, K. Madsen, who once found the tree on Westfyn island in Denmark. A small tree grew, probably from the seedlings of a Cox’s Orange, among the raspberry plants. This incident happened around 1910 and today, the Ingrid Marie is one of the most widely grown varieties in Sweden. The trees though hardy, still prefer warmer locations to grow and the apples are instantly recognizable when encountered due to its distinct size, shape and a colour of quite bright red. Some Swedes would deem this one of the best varieties of Swedish apples to be eaten as a dessert apple, baked in cakes, pies and stews. These apples keep till January.
Continue reading “Apple Sauce – from garden to table”
